Book Review: Rewrite: Loops in the Timescape

Rewrite: Loops in the Timescape by Gregory Benford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Be honest: Who hasn’t wished they could go back in time and re-do that most awkward stage of life… being a teenager? But rather than simply re-experience that time as it happened, we’d want to be a teenager again but without losing any of our memories. It would be so easy to “curate” a new timeline…

And that’s exactly what Charlie does. To the extreme. He’s got three decades worth of advance knowledge and as soon as he’s got his bearings, he sets out to cherry-pick future events and make them his own, whether he caused them the first time around or not. And the people he meets along the way! You’re going to recognize so many famous folk, from Einstein to Spielberg.

Now I need to give this story some tough-love. I adored 3/4 of the book. But I struggled with the last 1/4, as Charlie’s story takes several dark turns. Secret societies emerge, hidden agendas surface, and basically everything good and appealing about a life re-do goes sour. And the ending? Isn’t so much an ending as the writer just hitting a stop point.

My advice is to love this book… right up until you don’t. Then, close the book and go enjoy a re-watch of Back to the Future with the time you’ve saved.